Her words were so cold, so final, I almost shivered there in the rain. I took a step away and held both my hands up in surrender. “Okay, I’m sorry.Reallysorry. I just… please just let me help you pack up. That’s all.”
She stared at me with a mutinous expression, water running down her face and slicking her hair to her head. One sail chose that moment to flip over and pull the board with it. She glanced that way and then around at all the sails still to pack away and her shoulders dropped in defeat. “Fine,” she clipped, back to ignoring me as she bent over to roll up the sail at her feet. I saw her roll her shoulder again and resisted the urge to order her under the canopy and let me finish all of this. At that point, I doubted I could order her to do anything. It took a good half hour before all the sails and boards were stowed away. Yaz clearly wasn’t tall enough to reach the highest racks. I could hear her muttering about “sexist bloody storage systems” as I dragged the final board into the shed.
“Let me,” I said, as I came up behind her and reached for the board before lifting it easily up there. My arm brushed against hers briefly before she leapt away as if I’d burned her skin.
“Right, well, thanks again,” she said, not making eye contact as she stowed the last of the sails. “I’ll just–” I moved quickly to stand in her way, careful not to get too far into her space.
“Yaz, please, can I talk to you just for a minute?” My voice had a pleading quality that I don’t think I’d ever heard myself use before. Then again, I’d never been quite so desperate.
“We’ve said everything we need to say.” Her voice was dull, and she was still avoiding eye contact. “I don’t know what you’re playing at, but there’s nothing to atone for here. We both enjoyed what happened. The end. You’re free to go off and find your suitable life partner – one who ticks all your boxes and not one you have to settle for.”
“That’s not what I want, Midge.” Couldn’t she see the misery written all over me? The dark circles under my eyes because I couldn’t sleep without dreaming of her, the terror in my voice that she might be slipping through my fingers. “All I want is you. All I can think about is you.”
“You’ll get over it.” She flicked her hand out dismissively and went to step around me, but I moved with her.
“I won’tget over it. Didn’t you feel it too?” Disbelief and desperation were back in my voice. “I’ve never felt like that with anyone in my life. I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m not near you. Like I’m underwater and can’t get to the surface. Even being near you with you hating me like this makes me feel more alive than I’ve felt for the last two weeks.”
Her eyes widened during my speech and her mouth fell slightly open. She blinked up at me and a droplet of water fell from one of her lashes onto her cheekbone. I resisted the urge to move any closer, instinctively knowing I had to let her come to me. Her pupils dilated as her eyes took on that glazed look I recognised. Slowly, very slowly, her hand came up to my chest where she laid it flat over my heart, which felt like it was beating out of my chest.
“Heath,” she whispered on an exhale, her other hand going up to my neck as she swayed towards me.
“Yes,” I whispered back, my breath mingling with hers just before her lips meet mine. It was a light brush at first and I thought I had everything under control, but then she went up onto her tiptoes, her tongue swept into my mouth and that was it. Control was a thing of the past. My arms clamped around her, pulling her body into mine as I deepened the kiss. We backed up slowly until she was against the kayaks on the side wall of the shed. Her hand slipped around my back and under my t-shirt. Desperate to feel her skin, I reached up to the back of her neck to find the zip on her wetsuit. But at the sound of the Velcro and then the zip opening, she froze. After a moment, her lips broke away from mine and she tore away from me. Immediately, I stepped back, even though it felt like my heart was being ripped from my body.
“What am I doing?” Yaz whispered as she glanced around the shed a little wildly. She reached behind herself to do up the zip, but her hands were shaking and she kept fumbling with it. I took a step towards her, but she held up her hand to ward me off. “Stay back,” she choked out, her eyes filling with tears.
“It’s okay,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady, calm. “Just… let me help you.” I approached her slowly, and she sighed in resignation, sweeping her hair to the side so I could get to the zip and pull it up. I secured the Velcro over it for good measure, then spun around to grab her Dry Robe that was on the floor next to the kayaks. She let me help her into that and even zip her up to under her neck. Her mouth was in a tight line and she was avoiding eye contact. Once the zip was up to under her chin and none of her wetsuit clad body other than her lower legs were on show, I took a step back and cleared my throat.
“Midge, can we just spend some time together? Just talking. We can’t ignore this thing between us. What just happened proved that.”
“Allthisproves is that we need to stay away from each other.” Her voice grew more distant and I could feel her withdrawing. That desperation gripped me again.
“Please, Midge.” My voice was hoarse now. “I’m begging you. Please, just give me a chance.”
Her gaze softened, and one of her hands lifted a couple of inches towards me. Just for a moment, I thought I might have broken through. But then she blanked her expression again and her hand dropped to her side. “You don’t understand how much this could cost me. You’ve never understood.” Her eyes raised to meet mine now, lit with determination. “You’ve hurt me, Heath. You’ve let me down. Not just now, but over the last few years. You’re not the man I thought you were. I won’t risk getting more involved with you. I’m not going down that rabbit hole. Now, all I’m asking is that you respect that and stay away from me.” I opened my mouth to speak, but she swept out of there before I could get the words out, and for the first time since I was a child, I felt totally and utterly lost.
Chapter 14
I couldn’t breathe in there
Yaz
Don’t get me wrong – I love my mum and dad. But the last thing I needed right now was to have lunch with them. After the last encounter with Heath, I felt like I’d been turned inside out. My emotions were all over the place. Even the open water, which always settled my mind, didn’t seem to cut it at the moment. The wind had been fantastic over the last week. I’d pulled off some jumps and lifts with my kitesurfer that topped anything I’d done before. Bodhi was getting more and more excited about the sponsorship offers we were getting. I mean the free kit and exposure for the business was great, and if I did decide to agree to Brazil it would be a perfect side hustle. But for me, all this felt like selling out. And the sponsors didn’t just want to film the kiting, they even wanted to interview me. They said I was perfect for the brand. It was all just so corporate. But I was allowing myself to be swept along with it because I didn’t seem to have the mental energy to decide whether it was right for me or not. All of that energy seemed to be engaged in squashing memories of Heath’s lips on mine. His words floated through my head at the weirdest times.
I’ve never felt like that with anyone in my life.
That was what I heard as I was flying through the air yesterday, at least ten feet up – the highest I’d ever managed to get above the water.
I feel like I can’t breathe when I’m not near you.
After I landed, my vision blurred and I almost lost control of the kite. It took a moment for me to realise that not all the wet on my cheeks was from sea water.
So, although I loved my parents, I wasn’t really in the right state of mind to deal with them. My mum and dad required a certain level of mental resilience. They loved me, but they didn’t really respect me or my life choices.
My mum had grown up in Yorkshire. Her childhood was relatively tough, and then her marriage to her first husband (Max’s dad – a hard, cruel man who ran his farm and his home with an iron fist) was even tougher. She and Max lived with him for the first ten years of Max’s life before she’d finally had enough and left. She met my father after she’d moved down south to get away from Max’s.
My father is, by contrast, a gentle man, quiet and caring. He’s a local GP. Mum is a science teacher and Max an architect. All of them are professionals. They all have serious jobs and live serious lives. I, on the other hand, was never academic at school. University didn’t appeal to me; really anything that might take me away from the sea didn’t appeal to me. And my family have never been able to understand what they consider to be my aimless path in life.
Maybe it’s because Mum and Max both had hard, uncompromising existences before they moved away from Yorkshire, so they see my freer lifestyle as frivolous. I had long ago given up trying to explain what I was doing and what motivated me. They just didn’t understand. Their eyes glazed over if I started talking about spirituality, reiki, yoga, the healing powers of the sea… anything I really cared about. They were just serious people, and I… wasn’t. But surely there’s room for all sorts? We don’t all have to be serious professionals.
